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Commentary
Bureaucratic delays could lead to ‘last-resort’ culling of SA elephants, Parliament is warned
By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick As South Africa wrestles with elephant management, delays and a lack of accountability could push culling from a last resort to an all-too-possible outcome. Deputy Environment Minister Narend Singh told Parliament this week that culling elephants is a last resort and cannot proceed without ministerial approval. However, two provinces — North West and KwaZulu-Natal — appear to be manoeuvring to a position that makes such approval inevitable. Inexplicably, they had not been called to appear in a meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Forestry, Fisheries and the...
The last zoo elephants: Why Johannesburg can no longer justify their captivity
By Adam Cruise - Daily Maverick The continued confinement of Lammie, Ramadiba and Mopane rests on an assumption that their needs can be met within the Johannesburg Zoo. The available evidence suggests that this assumption is no longer secure. An alternative exists. The continued confinement of three elephants at the Johannesburg Zoo is often framed as a moral debate about captivity. It is now something more precise. On financial, institutional and welfare grounds, the City of Johannesburg can no longer sustain – let alone justify – the conditions required to keep them. As the last elephants...
News
Nine arrested in largest ivory seizure in a decade
By The Star Thai police have announced the largest seizure of smuggled ivory in a decade, with nine people arrested and accused of trying to sell 250kg of African elephant tusks via Facebook....
Stanford science reveals genetically distinct ‘ghost elephants’
By Chelcey Adami - Stanford Report Using DNA extracted from dung, researchers discovered that high-altitude elephants in Angola have a unique genetic lineage linked to Namibian elephants,...
Rethinking conservation through elephants’ sense of time and memory
By Mongabay Historically, conservation has mostly focused on numbers like population and habitat size. However, in the mid-2000s, scientists started to investigate animal emotions, even trauma, when...
Press releases
Lawsuit Launched After Trump Freezes Funds for Rhino, Elephant Anti-Poaching Patrols
By The Center for Biological Diversity Contact: Sarah Uhlemann, (206) 327-2344, suhlemann@biologicaldiversity.org Broad Range of International Conservation Projects Hit By Halt in U.S. Support WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity sent notice today of its intent to sue the...
Studies
Elephant barrier behaviours in response to conflict mitigation fences
By Dominique Gonçalves, Robert J. Smith, Helen M. K. O'Neill - The Society for...
Impacts of Human Development on Wildlife Use of Corridors in Botswana
By Tempe S. F. Adams, Keith Leggett, Michael J. Chase, Marlee A. Tucker -...
Energy flows reveal declining ecosystem functions by animals across Africa
By Ty Loft et al - Nature Abstract A key challenge for ecological science is...
Reports
Scientific Review of Botswana’s Elephant Hunting Programme
By Mike Chase and Scott Schlossberg - Elephants Without Borders (EWB) Summary 1. In 2019, Botswana ended a five-year moratorium on the hunting of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana). Here, we provide expert, outside review of the hunting programme and its scientific basis. Notably, we...
About
The Journal of African Elephants was created by a group of concerned journalists, biologists and conservationists, who, after years of tracking and documenting the catastrophic decline of Africa’s elephant populations, have recognised the urgent need for a dedicated English and French news and commentary space to enhance and increase global awareness of the plight of Africa’s savanna and forest elephants. Our Commentary service, in particular, are writers that focus on the need to provide awareness of Africa’s elephants and affected surrounding human communities from a distinctly African perspective that, for the most part, is lacking in the dominance of Western media.